New feathers

Last night I started designing the 2nd of the quilts I've entered for this year's shows but haven't made yet (gulp).I sat at my desk with a pencil and an eraser and played around until I came up with this. Most of the erasing was done to stop the feathers looking too formal. I find it quite difficult not to make the lobes even like the old feathers.
Once I was happy with it, I went over the pencil with a black pen. I then flipped the paper over (lightweight sketch pad) and copied it onto the back of the sheet. This gave me the mirror image.
The fabric is fine enough to trace through without the use of a lightbox with extra white paper behind the design. The brown lines are a disappearing Clover pen ti give me registration marks.
Whenever I've marked up wholecloths, I've always been a little sad to see the marking disappear. It's a totally different look. So this time the marking is part of the design. The fabric is pale blue and the markings are in teal and deliberately blurred. I shall stitch in teal thread to emphasize the lines.
Once I have this border design marked up, I shall design the centre of the quilt. I'm wondering whether to stick with the teal or change to a different colour for the central motif.

Adding a little colour wash to the background

Just thought I'd give it a whirl to see if it would work. I'm quite happy, the more I do the more I like them.
Am I up to doing a whole quilt yet? Probably......
I don't think I'm wasting my time, do you?
I get going on things and think they are the best thing since sliced bread, then look at them a year or two later and wonder what I was so fired up about.

so happy with this new idea

I quilted up last week's feather to take to the talk I gave last Monday. I'm so happy with how this looks. There is no trapunto but it has the same 3D effect.And these are more samples I did yesterday.

How I draw feathers (and something else for fun)

For fun, the magnets on the side of my fridge, they're not on full display as normally the kitchen door is open against the side of the fridge. The magnetic calender with one of Ferret's nudes arrived in today's post.
I start by outlining the area I must not go outside. In this case a 6" square. Then I draw the spine, followed by a rough guideline for where I want the lobes of the feathers to end.

Then I start by drawing the first lobe at the bottom on the right hand side (this one is the most difficult to make elegant but don't worry you can redraw it later if it really ends up badly) Each lobe starts from the spine. If I were left handed, I'd start on the other side of the spine.
When I get to the end, I do a final lobe but this time I start this final one from near the top of the preceding one. Instead of taking it back to the spine, I take it nearly to the spine then continue down nearly parallel to the first line. This gives you a nice double spine. Then starting at the bottom again, I draw the first lobe. I draw the next and all the following ones, not from the spine out but from near the tip of the lobe before it.
You can see I've gone outside my rough outline near the tip of the feather. This is OK, it's only a guide and when you reach somewhere where the rough line looks wrong, then go with what 'feels' right.